My favourite moment in media coverage of the Cassini-Huygens mission came
from UK Meridian local news, which highlighted the artistic angle: '... the
probe was named after Christiaan Huygens who discovered Titian.'

Return of the Cyberbullies. Lawyers representing the
Lord of the Rings film companies are
currently
menacing the owner of the Shiremail.com domain: because, you see, 'Shire' is
Tolkien's very own word which was his. Anyone daring to use it must be trading
on valuable LOTR 'goodwill', despite the term having been around for a
millennium or so. People with domain names containing other uniquely Tolkienian
words -- like elf, dwarf, orc, one, ring, or Sam -- should start preparing their
defences now.

As Others See Us. The San Diego Sun-Tribuneinterviewed
Kim Stanley Robinson and explained his reputation: 'early in his career he
got tagged as a "literary science fiction writer" -- that is, one
concerned with the working out of difficult problems in the near-to
middle-future, as opposed to, say, emulsifying extraterrestrials with high-tech
hardware.' (4 July) Our bemused reporter Tony Cullen remarks: 'And there I was
thinking he was tagged as a "literary sf writer" because he writes
good books.'

R.I.P.John Barron (1920-2004), UK TV actor, died on 3 July
aged 83. He had an uncredited role as a subeditor in The Day the Earth
Caught Fire (1961), and appeared in many genre TV productions including Doomwatch
(1970) and
Whoops Apocalypse (1982). [GD] John Cullen Murphy
(1919-2004), US artist and illustrator who drew the Arthurian Prince Valiant
strip (now 67 years old) since 1970, died on 2 July; he was 85. [PDF]

Publishers and Sinners (UK).Jo Fletcher of Orion/Gollancz
became engaged to Ian Drury of (keeping it in the family) Orion/Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, during a Turkish holiday in June: 'I am incredibly happy.' Wedding
next Spring. Jonathan Weir, late of Amazon.co.uk and HarperCollins, has joined the
same family as Gollancz publicity manager, replacing Nicola Sinclair. Lucy Dixon leaves Hodder & Stoughton publicity on 16 July and is
moving to John Murray.

The Pedant Strikes Back. M.J. Simpson on the
Runcible 134 obituary: 'Max J Rosenberg was not
a producer on Hammer's
The Curse of Frankenstein as widely reported but merely sold Hammer a
different Frankenstein script a few years before. His importance to the genre is
that his company Amicus was Hammer's only serious rival in the British horror
boom of the 1960s and 1970s.'

Thog's Masterclass.Dept of Cruel and Unusual Geometry. 'The
casket was a cube. It was about a meter and a half long, a half-meter wide,
another half-meter deep.' (Robert Wells, Spacejacks, 1975)